EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MAKING A PHOTO BOOK
Creating a photo book can be a great way to share and preserve your valuable photographs. There are a number of things you need to consider before making your photo book and, in this tutorial, we go through these in detail, plus we provide a step by step method to ensure your photo book is printed at the best quality possible. In preparing this tutorial I have assumed users are familiar with both Lightroom and Photoshop.
THERE ARE TWO YOUTUBE VIDEOS THAT COVER THE INFORMATION OUTLINED HERE, CLICK ON THE LINK TO GO DIRECTLY TO THE VIDEOS
A photo book can be a personal project, like this one, a family history, or just a collection of favourite photos. There are a multitude of reasons for making a photo book.
PART 1: THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOU START MAKING A PHOTO BOOK
1. DECIDE WHO THE BOOK IS FOR:
Before you start anything, you need to decide who the book is to be for – is it for your own use as a record of your images, a gift for family members, or even perhaps for sale to the public?
Knowing how your book will be used will help you decide on important things like design, content, titles and descriptions. Choose a title for you book that reflects its purpose and content.
There are many different types of books: Travelogue, family memories, or a special function (wedding?), Personal portfolio, storytelling, artistic or personal project. Each requires a slightly different approach and design, so before you start, be clear about who your book is for and how it is intended to be used.
2. CHOOSE THE SIZE AND ORIENTATION, PAPER AND STYLE
Photo books can be landscape, portrait or square, decide what works best for your project. Typically, most photo books are landscape, but if your images are mostly portrait orientation, or square, consider one of the other options.
There are also options for the type of binding (also depending on the number of pages), paper stock, cover design and type of cover, etc., Some of these options come at a premium price, so choose carefully. Decide how many pages you are going to use for the book. Don’t make it too big. Remember, each “page” is really a face, so a 60 page book has 30 “sheets”, 2 sided. Allow for blank and title pages where necessary. It is important to know roughly how many images you need for your book when you start to curate and cull selections.